Month: April 2015

This was incredible to me: And increased reliance on social media for interaction has another effect that might lead to depression. Only 18 percent of UCLA’s survey-takers said they spent more than 16 hours with their friends per week, whereas in 1987 that number was 37.9 percent. More specifically, kids aren’t partying: In 1987, fewer…

The difference between statistical significance and practical significance is often blurred. Consider the recurring alarmist articles about how skunk will make you have severe schizophrenia forever. What’s the evidence? Here’s a paper from 11 years ago: On an individual level, cannabis use confers an overall twofold increase in the relative risk for later schizophrenia. At…

A frequently-asked question, but not to my face, is why blacks can’t be more like Asians. Previous posts have talked about the role of affirmative action for white people, or the actual efforts of black people to do model minority stuff. Along those lines, The Culture of Narcissism (1979) described how these efforts were undermined…

In my experience, polyamory is a way of being self-absorbed and treating others like objects. Much like patriarchy, it’s based on the denial and suppression of natural human emotions (attachment and jealousy). Reading The Culture of Narcissism: American Life in an Age of Diminishing Expectations (1979), I was surprised to see how long this sort…

This article about the Rodney King Riots is very good. It’s written from the perspective of someone who’s the same age as me (10 at the time). Her family was Korean and their business was destroyed. It was so ironic to think that the people who had supported us, our customers, had finally destroyed us.…

I’m about to quote a long section of Military Brats: Legacies of Childhood Inside the Fortress. It’s about the typical profile of the child molesters seen by a commander in the Navy’s Medical Service Corps (i.e., enlisted people). As you’re reading it, notice the very strong similarity to the archetype of what’s considered sexy and…

From Ars Technica: One of the most frequently mentioned issues with GMO foods is a vague concern about bringing genes from distantly related organisms into plants. But an international team of biologists has now found that this has occurred naturally in a major crop plant: the sweet potato. The strains of this crop that we…

Sometimes I go to San Francisco, and I’d like to thank The Guardian over in the UK for the heads up: Fourteen San Francisco officers and department employees are alleged to have sent or received the text messages in 2011 and 2012. The messages included slurs against black people, Mexicans, Filipinos and gay people, police…